I've been holding off updating my mac to OS Yosemite due to all the bad reviews of the performance. Is it worth it or should I wait?

Get an external HDD or partition your SSD and download Yosemite on one of those volumes. That way you can test the OSX and make an informed judgement if you want to commit to it. Should you not like it, you not be trapped. Note that Mavericks is no longer available in the App store.

Ciao.

Johno2126 wrote:

I've been holding off updating my MacAir to OS Yosemite due to all the bad reviews. Is it worth downloading or should i wait for a later OS?

Every OSX ever released has had bad reviews from someone. Yosemite seems to have less than the previous few. I like to get in the habit of reading all the positive reviews out there as well. Forums such as this exaggerate problems with an OSX as users with no issues, the many, many million, have no reason to post here. I am running 18 studio Macs on 10.10.1 with no issues.

Cheers

Pete

I have Yosemite on an external HDD. I have some apps that require an older OSX for my working MBP.

All I can tell you is that the few times I have used it, there have been no issues.

Ciao.

Installing Yosemite on a separate partition or external USB drive will amount to a clean install and will therefore have the best chance of minimizing problems, but it is not a true test of what will happen if you upgrade your current Mavericks boot partition with all of the software and custom user settings you may have. A real test would be for you to clone your Mavericks partition to a USB drive using some software like SuperDuper, then boot to the clone (by pressing the Option key during startup and selecting the Mavericks clone on your USB drive) and run the upgrade on it. Then see how well it works for you personally before upgrading your machine's actual internal drive. If it works then clone your main Mavericks partition once again so you will have an image backup you can actually restore to your MacBook. Keep in mind that some users only began encountering problems two weeks into using Yosemite. I admit the reviews I have seen on Apple's App Store are certainly cause for concern. Currently 68% of the reviewers are giving one star ratings (the lowest you can give). A lot of people are complaining about the new look being a step backwards and very unlike the Apple elegance we have all come to love and expect, but the vast majority are complaining about technical issues which are of course a greater concern. You can run all the tests you want, but in the end you have to ask yourself are the new features in Yosemite something you really have to have right now, or can you wait until they iron out some of the bugs?

Patrick Weisser wrote:

Currently 68% of the reviewers are giving one star ratings (the lowest you can give).

How many reviews?

Pete

This is where it stands as of this minute. Apple seems to clear out the feedback numbers after every bug fix release, so these numbers are just in the past week or so. You can follow the numbers yourself directly on the Apple Store, and read all of the feedback comments there which I would highly recommend doing before upgrading. When to upgrade is a personal decision based on how much downtime you're willing to risk having for your machine. Casual users have less to lose than people with mission critical applications and work to get done. But in either case, the feedback from fellow users is certainly worth reading. Whatever else you do, be sure to make a full bootable image backup to an external drive before upgrading. This will enable you to make a bit-perfect restoration of your machine as it is now (operating system and all) if things do go south after you upgrade.

So that is out of 900 reviews?????? Wow, universal problem for those out of the tens of millions of users who ever bother leaving feedback. Certainly not at the great heights of 200 reviews in Mavericks and Mountain Lion, so must be a much better OS X on that rationale.

Even Googling Review Yosemite OS X brings up a first page of all positive reviews from all those computer sites who normally knock everything Apple do.

Cheers

Pete

Before you consider updating - checkout the what's new section of Yosemite -- also check all your apps to see if they are supported and your hardware.

Well as any television network executive will tell you, for every complaint letter or email they get, there are likely a thousand people who feel the same but don't bother to comment. That's why it must be considered sample data, and only a little over a week's worth at that. That makes it even more remarkable since it reflects the latest bug fix release, and things should be getting better. I recently called Apple Support for a problem I was having with Yosemite on my 27" Cinema Display, and the hold time was 20 minutes when it's usually just a couple. Apple Support was excellent as usual once I got someone, but the long wait time tells me something is keeping them very busy these days. People don't call for support when all is well.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm a huge Apple fan and have been for many years. I've bought into the entire ecosystem with 5 Macs, 3 iPhones, 3 iPads, 3 Apple TV's, etc. I care passionately what happens with Apple and I'm looking forward to a long continued relationship with them and a bright future. But I have to honestly say that I have been concerned with the User Interface direction they have taken with iOS and now OSX over the past two years. I'm a business owner and can easily spend 12 hours a day in front of my Mac display getting real work done - not just watching videos, checking FaceBook, or playing games. I have perfect vision, but I'm getting severe eye strain from Yosemite. That's not just about disliking how it looks - it's a functional usability issue. Add to that the lack of quality control in this release (as evidenced by the widely reported wi-fi issues), and I'm genuinely and sincerely concerned about what is going on. Yes I freely admit that I'm nostalgic for how beautiful (and internally efficient) Snow Leopard was with it's colored application sidebar icons and "lickable" traffic light icons, but I could also use it and every release of OSX up to Mavericks for hours on end without eye fatigue.

And make no mistake, even with the misgivings I have over the directions taken in iOS and OSX of late, Apple is still by far better than any of the alternatives, and I will stand by them as they work their way through these growing pains, and hopefully listen to their loyal users as we express our sincere heart-felt concerns.

Where is this ratings page -- i've tried but can't find it.

Thanks

Hello John. You can find this ratings page in Apple's own App Store. Apple clears the current ratings and comments (both positive and negative) with each Yosemite bug fix release they have, so the current counts have been reset several times since the initial Yosemite release. But the ratio of one star to five star ratings has pretty consistently been 2 to 1 over the many thousands of ratings given since Yosemite was released (that is, two out of three people strongly prefer pre-Yosemite versions of OS X for various reasons). We hope the good people at Apple are listening. Questionable aesthetics aside, I for one have been unable to use Yosemite because the lack of contrast in the interface causes me severe eye strain. And that's a functional issue for me since I use my Mac for work and am on it about 12 hours a day.

That rating is different for each country and is representative of a tiny tiny percentage of users. Often no more than a hundred.

Pete

Well Peter since December 4th (shown in the graphic above), the ratings count has actually gone from 17,062 to the current 25,511, so that's more than 100 people expressing their opinions, let alone what can be found elsewhere on this discussion forum. Even some of the major trade journals such as InformationWeek are beginning to report on the networking problems in Yosemite caused by the new DiscoveryD subsystem which Apple designed for the new handoff feature. DiscoveryD replaced older open source code which had been working perfectly for many years in previous OS X releases, but it's not quite ready for prime time yet. The bottom line is, if you don't need the new Yosemite features like handoff, and you use your Mac for real work and need maximum stability and usability, it would be wise to wait until Apple sorts things out a bit more with Yosemite. I have every confidence they will, but they need some more time. They need to take a year and just work on bug fixes without adding new features - like they did between the Leopard and Snow Leopard releases. That brought us what is arguably the most stable and internally efficient OS X release in history - Snow Leopard. In my opinion it was also the most aesthetically pleasing release of OS X ever. We need another Snow Leopard from Apple.